


A striking resemblance to the embers of the past

by victoria_p (musesfool)



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Revelations, Rey is a Skywalker, just not how she expected, the skywalker family tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-07
Updated: 2017-11-07
Packaged: 2019-01-30 13:12:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12654225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musesfool/pseuds/victoria_p
Summary: Leia insists Rey have a DNA test to make sure she and Finn are not related. The results are not what anyone was expecting.





	A striking resemblance to the embers of the past

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Thea Gilmore.

**i.**

Rey spends a lot of time in the infirmary before she leaves for Ahch-To, and as long as they let her sit by Finn's bedside, she doesn't care about the battery of tests Dr. Kalonia insists on running or the multiple vaccinations the medics insist on administering. Her arm is a little sore in spots, but now at least she's allegedly protected from half a dozen diseases she's never even heard of. She doesn't even flinch when the General insists on a DNA test. 

"You never know who you might be kissing," she says with a wry grin, and Rey knows there's a story there, but the General waves her off. "I need alcohol for that one," she insists, and Rey doesn't push.

She leaves before the results come in, but it's always there in the back of her mind as she trains with Luke, the knowledge that she might just find her family after all.

***

**ii.**

Kix doesn't plan to join the Resistance. It's not until the First Order blows up the Hosnian system that he realizes this war is still his war, still the same war he fought in so many decades ago. The names have changed but the stakes haven't, and so he hops a shuttle to D'Qar with half a dozen other idiots, most of whom have no idea what they're getting into. Kix knows. He's not sure if that makes him more or less idiotic, but he finds he can't sit this one out, not after he'd been unable to deliver the intelligence that might have saved the Republic (and his brothers) so many years ago.

No one recognizes him when he arrives--he's probably the last of the clones left, and none of these kids are old enough to have seen the Clone Wars in person. Members of the command staff might know, but he keeps out of their way, makes himself useful in the med bay. 

His experience comes in handy--not just actual medical knowledge, but the ability to stay cool under fire and to evac in a quick and orderly fashion, so that when they unpack on the next base four days later, nothing has been lost.

"We're having a bit of a lull," Dr. Kalonia says to him once they've got all the equipment set up and the few patients left in their care are sleeping, "and there's a backlog of tests waiting to be performed and catalogued." She gestures at a refrigerated crate full of vials and cultures.

"Yes, sir," Kix says.

He doesn't mind the hours spent over a microscope or staring at results on a datapad. It means things are quiet and nobody is getting hurt.

He's several hours into sorting and cataloguing scans when he comes across a set of results that make him wonder if he's seeing things. He blinks and reruns the test, and then calls 2-1B over to run the test again.

"Is there a problem?" Dr. Kalonia says when she sees them conferring.

"There are some anomalies in this DNA scan," Kix says. 

"Anomalies?" she asks, taking the datapad from him.

"Cloning markers, for one," Kix says. "I haven't seen those since--a very long time ago."

Dr. Kalonia frowns down at the screen and Kix wonders if he should have just kept his mouth shut.

"Yes," she finally says. "I imagine you'd be familiar with them." She gives him a wry smile. "Some of us remember the Clone Wars."

"Oh."

"Don't fret. I won't tell anyone."

"Thank you."

She waves off his gratitude and returns her attention to the test results. "And the DNA match?"

"That's the other thing," he says. "Look at the next screen." She dutifully swipes to the next screen. "The subject is definitely related to General Organa." On the one hand, finding more surviving Alderaanians must be thrilling, even so many years later; on the other, how this particular Alderaanian could have stayed hidden so long is...concerning, to say the least. Even Kix knows that. 

All the color drains from the doctor's face. "This is impossible." She calls 2-1B over. "Run this scan again."

"Yes, doctor."

The results don't change. 

"We need to speak with the General," she says. "Two-One Bee, tell no one about any of this."

"Yes, doctor."

"Come along, Kix. This is not going to be a pleasant conversation."

Kix has heard about General Organa's sharp tongue, though he has yet to experience it himself. "Yes, sir." 

***

**iii.**

Leia looks up at the knock on her office door. 

"Dr. Kalonia, come in." She narrows her eyes at the doctor's companion. There's something familiar about him but she can't place it. She's not sure if it's age or lack of practice; since her exit from official galactic politics, she's let some of those skills get rusty. "Is something wrong?"

"We've been catching up on organizing the DNA scans you ordered before we left D'Qar, and Kix found some results you need to know about."

Leia gives a soft bark of laughter. "Don't tell me Rey and Finn are actually related." 

"No, it's not Finn she appears to be related to."

Kix gives the doctor a puzzled look, and Leia tries to shake off her sudden sense of deep foreboding. "Oh?"

"The subject is related to you, General," Kix says. "Though there are some unusual markers in the DNA that indicate they are a clone."

"You're saying she's a clone of me?" Leia forces herself to laugh. "Except taller?"

"No," Harter says, and she's using that gentle voice doctors use when they've got bad news. Leia's used it often enough herself to know, though usually the bad news she's bringing is political, not personal. "She's a clone of your father."

*

Leia can't breathe. She's too old for this shit. She sits behind her desk and forces herself not to hyperventilate. The test results stare up at her in glaring green type on the black screen of the datapad; Harter and Kix left it with her and swore they'd told no one what they'd discovered. Kix didn't even seem to understand the problem, which makes her wonder what rock he's been living under. 

She needs to comm Luke. She needs to not know this. She needs a contingency plan or three in case the girl--Rey. Her name is Rey and despite her genetics, she is not Anakin Skywalker and she hasn't yet done anything to make Leia distrust her, and maybe in a million years Leia will be able to deal with this.

For now, she reaches into the desk drawer and pulls out the bottle of Corellian brandy Admiral Statura had given her after the destruction of Starkiller. She allows herself one drink to steel her nerves, and then she begins the process of routing a holocall to the Falcon. Hopefully by the time it connects, she'll have figured out what to say.

*

Luke blinks slowly at Leia, the staticky blue of the holocall doing nothing to hide the confusion on his face as he processes the news.

"Do you think Ben knows?" she asks before she can stop herself. "Did Snoke do this?"

"It could be why they're so interested in her," Luke answers noncommittally. 

She hasn't seen him in years and she already wants to shake him for his stupid Jedi reserve. 

"Or it could just be how strong with the Force she is." Another long pause, and Leia can't tell if it's the time lag due to distance or if Luke is having as much trouble with this as she is but trying to hide it better. Probably both. "She could be some forgotten contingency Palpatine put in place but--"

"The timing is off for that." Leia finishes the sentence and he nods.

"Unless Hux--"

"He was fanatically loyal to the Empire. And Finn says he was very interested in reviving the use of clones for the First Order. Or at least his son is." Leia's mouth quirks. "Finn is the Stormtrooper who defected."

Luke grins back, suddenly looking younger and more like the brother she remembers. "Yes, I've heard a lot about him." Then he sobers. "It's possible, but then why abandon her on Jakku as a child?"

"To hide her? Perhaps he meant to retrieve her but lost a power struggle and no one else knew about her?" Leia shakes her head. Trying to fathom anything Rax or Hux did in those last days of the war is impossible. "That's not even the most confusing thing. Shouldn't a clone of Anakin Skywalker be genetically male?"

Luke shrugs. "Obi-Wan once told me that the Jedi believed--or were told--that Father was conceived by the Force itself, that no human male was involved in the process."

"That's ridiculous."

"With the Force all things are possible," Luke replies, "but yes. Father himself was ambivalent about it the one time I asked. Palpatine led him to believe such things were within the purview of the dark side, but Palpatine lied so much that he didn't know whether that was true or not. He seemed to attribute it to Grandmother trying to shield him from the harsher realities of her life."

Her life as a slave, Leia thinks, but doesn't say. It's one more piece of the puzzle she'd never managed to put together about Vader. Not that she'd tried particularly hard, despite Luke's efforts to engage her in it. All she says is, "You'd think being 'one with the Force' would have answered some of these questions."

Luke shrugs again, always much more comfortable with the mysteries of the Force than Leia would ever be. "Rey's biological sex is the least weird thing about this, if you think about it. It's the kind of modification cloners would find simple. Perhaps Hux, or whoever, thought a female version would be easier to control." He laughs softly. "I guess they didn't yet know about you."

Leia swallows down the sharp reply that springs to mind and presses her lips together. Unlike Luke and Han, she'd never found it funny when people suggested she'd inherited more than strength in the Force from Vader (though not, sadly, any of his height). It was even worse when people who'd known him as Anakin Skywalker--and they'd met a couple along the way--did it.

Luke must sense her annoyance because he sobers again. "Regardless, Rey has done nothing to warrant suspicion or mistrust, so I hope you can get a handle on your feelings by the time we return."

Leia hopes so too, but she's not optimistic about it. "You're coming back?"

"Yes." Now Luke purses his lips. The beard hides half his expression, but she knows him well enough to see that he's not happy, that maybe he's even scared, though not for the same reasons she is. Or maybe for exactly the same reasons, but with his own weird Jedi twist. "It's time."

"Are you going to tell her?"

"Not now, no. We can tell her together."

"That she's the clone of our evil, dead father, who terrified the galaxy for twenty years." Leia's voice is remarkably dry.

Luke snorts. "Well, when you put it that way, maybe Dr. Kalonia should tell her."

"There's probably some confidentiality rule she broke by telling _me_ ," Leia admits, "but I'm glad she did."

"Yeah." Luke pauses, and then he just can't help himself. He never can. "He did come back to the light at the end, though." 

Leia closes her eyes and takes a deep breath before responding. "That's never been as comforting to me as you'd like it to be."

Luke sighs. "I know. In the meantime, take care of yourself, and I'll see you soon."

"May the Force be with you, Luke." She doesn't say, we're going to need it.

***

**iv.**

The new base is on a planet that's covered in white stuff like Starkiller was, but it's a crystalline, mineral white rather than a snowy, cold one. It reminds Rey more of Jakku than anything, though she'd never seen the salt flats rumored to make up much of the southern hemisphere of the planet.

She doesn't really care where the base is, though she misses the sound and smell of the sea--she'd thought she'd never get used to it when she first arrived on Ahch-To, but now it seems odd not to hear the constant crash of the waves upon the rocks, and to smell the singular saltwater smell of the island.

Still, Crait has one thing going for it that Ahch-To didn't, and that's Finn's presence. He's alive, he's awake, and he's as excited to see her as she is to see him. 

"And, we're not related," Rey tells him after the long recitation of her adventures in Jedi training.

"I didn't think we were," Finn replies, confused. "Did you think we were?"

Rey laughs. "No, but General Organa insisted we take a DNA test, just to make sure."

"There's gotta be story there."

"I'm sure there is, but I haven't asked."

"And your family?"

Rey shrugs. She knows Luke is concealing something from her, and she's pretty sure she knows what it is, but she hasn't pressed. It's enough that he finally agreed to teach her the ways of the Force. She doesn't need him to acknowledge that she's his daughter. When she'd first figured it out, she'd been desperate to understand why he'd abandoned her on Jakku, but now she thinks he didn't even know she existed until she showed up to disturb his exile with his father's lightsaber in hand.

"He and the General are going to talk to me about it after lunch. You should come with me."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah," she says, taking his hand and tangling their fingers together. "I want you there."

*

The General's office is already crowded when Rey and Finn arrive. Luke is there, of course, and Dr. Kalonia, and one of the medics.

"Kix," Finn says, surprised.

"Hey." Kix gives them both a warm smile, and Rey finds herself smiling back.

"You haven't met Rey, have you?" Finn continues, and Kix offers her a hand to shake. "He's been helping with my physical therapy."

"Brothers have to stick together," Kix says.

Rey glances at Finn and mouths, "Brothers?" It seems she's not the only one who's found family with the Resistance.

Finn gives her a gentle nudge. "I'll explain later."

"Kix is the one who ran your DNA scan," Dr. Kalonia says, "and he noticed some anomalies."

"Anomalies?" Rey can't quite suppress her shiver. The Force is brimming with tension--she can see it reflected in the way the General won't quite meet her gaze, feel it in the way Luke watches her with a gentle compassion that makes her more nervous than the General's avoidance. Finn gives her hand a comforting squeeze and she shoots him a grateful glance.

"Nothing terrible," Kix says reassuringly. 

General Organa presses her lips together tightly and doesn't speak, but she doesn't need to--Rey can tell she disagrees.

"Your scan turned up some genetic markers that indicate you weren't born so much as cloned," Dr. Kalonia says.

"Cloned," Rey repeats slowly, trying to wrap her head around the idea. She looks at Luke. "So I'm not your daughter?"

"No, Rey, you're not my daughter." Luke shakes his head as if the idea had never occurred to him. "But we _are_ related." His smile is warm and kind. "You're the clone of Anakin Skywalker."

" _What?_ " she says, and she's not alone. Kix is also staring at Luke with a shocked expression on his face. "How?"

"We don't know," the General says grimly, "but the tests have come up with the same result every time."

"And from what I remember, you do resemble Shmi Skywalker, our grandmother," Luke explains when Rey continues to stare at him in shock. "Uncle Owen had a holopic of her wedding to his father."

"I can see it," Kix says, nodding. He's recovered from his surprise faster than Rey has.

"You can see Rey's resemblance to our grandmother?" the General asks incredulously.

"No, I never met her. But General Skywalker? Him, I knew." He turns to the General. "Didn't know you were his daughter, though. How'd that happen?"

"Twins," the General replies, nodding her chin at Luke in a gesture that reminds Rey of Han.

"You do look like the senator," Kix says with a nod of his own.

"How?" Rey asks again. Her hands are trembling and she curls them into fists to make them stop.

"I was a member of Torrent Company, in the 501st Legion of the Grand Army of the Republic."

"You're a clone," the General says. "That's why you look so familiar." She turns to Luke. "You remember Captain Rex, right?"

"You knew Rex?" Kix grins. "He was the best of us."

"This is all very interesting," Rey says, her voice a little shriller than she'd like; she's not doing a great job holding onto the calm Luke's insisted is so important to successfully becoming a Jedi. "But I still have a lot of questions about--" She gestures helplessly. "Everything." She gives Luke a desperate look. "Am I going to fall?"

"No. No," he assures her. "Genetics is not destiny, Rey. Look at me and Leia."

"But Kylo Ren--"

"He made his choice," the General says hoarsely. "I continue to hope he'll change his mind, but it _was_ a choice, Rey. Just like it was Vader's choice to do terrible things, and then to keep doing them."

"He chose the dark side," Luke says, "but he came back to the light before he died."

He's told Rey the story of Vader's final change of heart more than once. It's a nice story, and she knows it means a lot to Luke, but right now, it doesn't offer her anything resembling comfort.

Finn seems to sense that; he puts an arm around her shoulders. She freezes, torn between the impulse to snuggle into his embrace and the impulse to keep him safe by pushing him away.

"Who else knows?" she asks, letting Finn's warmth seep into her chilled bones.

"Just the six of us in this room," Luke replies. "And we'll keep it that way."

"We should tell Poe," she says. He's got a right to know, to decide if he still wants to be friends with her.

"If you'd like," Luke allows. "It's your decision."

Rey nods. "Can we--Should we meditate?"

"We can if you want to," he says. 

"I need--" I need this to not be true, she thinks, but she says, "I think I need to, yeah."

"Okay. Leia, would you like to join us?"

"I'll pass," she says.

Rey looks at her, this woman who has been so kind to her even after having lost so much. "General--"

"It'll be all right, Rey." Her smile is tight and false, but her tone is determined. "We'll _make_ it all right."

Rey wants to believe her.

"Come see me when you're ready," Kix says. "I can tell you about General Skywalker, and about being a clone."

"Thank you," Rey says. "I think I'd like that."

He and Dr. Kalonia leave the office, and Luke goes as well. 

Rey is moving to follow him when the General says, "Rey." Rey pauses and turns to look at her. "I know this is hard--nobody knows that better than I do--but I mean it. You _will_ be okay."

"Thank you," Rey says again, this time with a small but genuine smile.

Finn stops when they're in the hallway outside the General's office, and Rey braces herself. Of course he'd wait until they were in private to tell her he doesn't want to be friends anymore.

"Listen," he says, palming the back of her neck and pressing his forehead to hers, so they're breathing the same air. "You're my friend, Rey, and possibly something more. I'm not--I don't care about your genes." She can't look away from the sincerity in his eyes. "You're not him. You're you, and you're one of the best people I know. You're not gonna fall and you're not gonna fail. I believe in you, Rey. Even when you don't believe in yourself." His mouth quirks in a brief half-grin. "Maybe especially then."

Rey sucks in a shuddering breath and surprises herself by crying. Finn holds her until the tears stop and she lets his warm strength hold her up when she feels like she's going to collapse. She's not sure how long they stand in the corridor like that, but finally, she gets herself under control.

"Thank you," she murmurs. He's such a good person; she's not sure she deserves him, but if he's not going to run away, even now that he knows who he'll be kissing, she's not going to push him. 

Her breathing is still shaky and she feels scraped out and hollow, but Finn waits patiently, and when he leaves her at the door to Luke's quarters, the Force is there, ready to fill her up with light and certainty.

"I guess this is weird for you, too," she says as she settles down on the soft mat he uses for meditation.

"Yes," he admits, "but I'm used to weird. I'll survive." He gives her a small smile. "Listen to Leia. You're going to be fine. And she will be too." He holds out a hand and she takes it. "Please trust yourself, and please, trust me."

"I do," she says, and then, when that doesn't feel quite true, "I will."

For the moment, it will have to be enough.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] A striking resemblance to the embers of the past](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12866451) by [reena_jenkins](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reena_jenkins/pseuds/reena_jenkins)




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